Research

We are interested in the mechanical behavior of soft materials. These include soft active materials which deform in response to an external stimulus, such as dielectric elastomers or hydrogels.

Why soft materials: Ubiquitous in nature and daily life, soft active materials are also envisioned to be the building blocks for a new generation of soft machines and devices, such as wearable power generators, stretchable sensors, and soft robots. However these materials present new challenges in modelling and simulation, due to nonlinear mechanics, coupled fields, and multiple physics.

What are our aims:

- Developing theoretical models for various soft materials, such as elastomers which exhibit large deformation, instabilities, and viscoelasticity. Their behavior may often include multiple phenomena coupled together, such as electrical, mechanical, or chemical processes.

- Developing our modeling and simulation capabilities for these materials. Such efforts include finite element analysis using in-house codes and user-defined subroutines in commercial softwares.

- Exploring diverse engineering and biomedical applications for these soft materials.

Who we work with: We work with various collaborators from universities and research institutes in Singapore and around the world, which include: Professor Zhigang Suo (Harvard University), Professor Siegfried Bauer (JKU Linz), Asst. Professor Jian Zhu (NUS), Asst. Professor Adrian Koh (NUS).